


Lover's Perjuries

by Miyai



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Drinking to Cope, Episode Tag s01e05 I've Gotta Get Away, F/F, Feelings Realization, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Secrets, from like the first half of the episode on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 18:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18722782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miyai/pseuds/Miyai
Summary: Judy doesn’t really understand how it started. She does know what will happen now, though, or at least that is what she thinks.





	Lover's Perjuries

Judy doesn’t really understand how it started. How, and, more importantly, why.

  
Maybe it’s the living with Jen, the helping her through the grief thing with the additional, horrible bonus of guilt so heavy it doesn’t let her sleep at night. Maybe it’s something else.  
Maybe it’s the way sometimes she doesn’t just feel like she simply lives in Jen’s home, but that she actively belongs. The feeling gets stronger often, when she helps Henry with his homework, when Charlie pretends he doesn’t want her around but then will sit next to her, extra close. When she makes breakfast for Jen and the kids. God, especially then.

  
Judy has always been the nurturing type, motherly demeanor before she ever even had the chance of being one, and being needed – it does something to her.

  
It feels like her heart expands whenever she realizes that Jen relies on her for making breakfast, unthinking, simply assuming Judy’s presence as a given. Like it’s only natural for them to share a space, only natural for them to wind up together on the outdoor couch most nights, huddled under the blankets, Judy steadily cuddling closer and closer to Jen. They’re not calling it that though, because Jen would surely protest; tough, angry Jen who clams up faster than an oyster at the mention of emotions and healthy processing of things.

  
Everything is already so messed up at this point, terribly tangled – it started out that way, and it continued in much the same fashion if Judy really thinks about it. Even then, when Jen was screaming at her in front of everyone in the grief group, her only thought was not for the humiliation, or how everyone might view her now, but instead it was regret, for having hurt Jen of all people, and the desperate hope that whatever was between them had not been ruined forever.

  
Maybe it started then, Judy thinks, looking over at Jen lounging next to her at the pool side at the grief retreat of all things. Hoping that Jen didn’t see her eyes widen when she saw Judy looking at her in that gorgeous bikini, starving like a dying flower for water, filled by a realization so big it scared her.

  
Hoping Jen didn’t see the tiny lightbulb turning on over Judy’s head right then, her sudden moment of clarity. The big yet quiet oh when she suddenly knew that this was what everything had been building towards. She likes Jen. She _likes_ Jen. Oh God.

  
She’s clinging to her book, putting up a front, and hopes that that’s enough.

  
*  
Jen just scoops the sunscreen from her hands instead of letting Judy touch her, and Judy feels a sharp stab of disappointment. She breathes through it.

  
Then that hot widower thing happens, Jen ogling him, talking about being open for business, and Judy rolls with it for lack of a better option. This is what she is supposed to do, after all. This is who she is supposed to be to Jen, and she better start processing that in a healthy way as soon as possible. She just doesn’t really know how yet, but it’ll hopefully come to her eventually.

  
*

Retroactively, Judy thinks, everything kind of makes sense. That was what that jittery feeling that sometimes overwhelms her late at night next to Jen means. This is why the thought of leaving Jen behind, of ending their friendship, of going back to Steve felt so bad, so wrong, like forcing a puzzle piece into the picture, into the place it least belongs in. This is why she wants to keep making breakfast for the Harding family forever and ever and ever.

In the quiet of her room, after the grief circle for Pregnancy and Loss, she takes a minute to process all this, thinks about Jen and their friendship and decidedly doesn’t think about Ted. It is what it is, she thinks. She and Jen are friends, and that will have to be enough. As long as she doesn’t fall from one co-dependency into the other, she’s fine.

Yeah, she’s fine.

*

“I fully support you trying to get laid, though,” Judy says, and thinks that there aren’t a lot of things she has said in her life that she has meant less. Maybe when Steve told her it was over the first time, and she said fine by me, but apart from that, nothing comes to mind.

“Thank you,” Jen says, and Judy has to suppress the urge to lean forward on her barstool and just press their lips together. Jen looks so good tonight – well, not just tonight, Judy remembers a particular red suit jacket-blue jeans-heels combo –, and she despairs a little as she watches Jen try and fail her way through hitting first on Hot Widower, then another attractive, less grief stricken guy, and only then, when that doesn’t work out either for some reason Judy can’t discern from her place at the bar, does she return to her seat next to Judy.

Judy smiles at her anyway and orders two Virgin Coladas for them, and a glass of water for Jen too.

This is fine.

*

Just when Judy is about to turn off the light, close the book on this weird-as-all-get-out day, she gets pulled back into the fray by Jen knocking on her door with a bottle of wine she found somewhere and insisting Judy see the stars with her.

Outside it’s cold, and not a lot of stars are to be found, but they’re sharing a blanket and the bottle, indirect kiss after indirect kiss, and Judy thinks that she could do this without issue, forever.

*

They’re both shivering a little on the way back inside, and Jen follows Judy into her room without asking, and they get into bed to warm up; not really talking, just floating in that comfortable space after a really good deep talk (that involved some tears) where you’ve run out of meaningful things to say but are not yet ready to let the other person go.

“Hey,” Judy says after they’ve been lying in bed a while. She thinks Jen may have started to drift off, because the only reaction Judy gets is a sleepy “Hm…mmmm?”, before Jen sits up in bed next to her, looking down at Judy in the weird half-light of the room.

“What?”

“Did you really mean it?”

“Mean what?” Jen asks, and Judy is glad to register that she sounds a lot more sober now than throughout the day.

“That you’re glad he’s dead.”

Jen sighs, pushes her hand through her hair, a weirdly insecure gesture. “Not really, no. I am – angry, even angrier than before, at him. I was already so goddamn angry, at that piece of shit who took him from me, at him for running at night and being so fucking careless all the time. At myself. We had a fight that night, you know?”

Judy nods, because, well, she figured, and tries to push down the trauma flashback she can feel bubbling up. She’s been getting good at that, had to be, just to be around Jen. It’s worth it, though, she tells herself. Jen’s worth it.

“And I – I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t screamed at him that night? Then he would still be here with me – well, not here, because we’d be back home, not at some fucking grief retreat with phenomenal alcohol. But now I – whenever I think about that, I think about how fucking clueless I’d still be then, and how he would’ve kept on making a fool of me, that asshole.”

Jen huffs, sounding somewhere between angry and frustrated, and Judy instinctively reaches out. Takes her hand, and smiles when Jen tangles their finger together.

“I think it’s better that you know,” she says, and means it. “Only if we confront our grief honestly and with open eyes, then we can truly move on from it.” She’s aware of the irony of it, that part about honesty and informed decisions, but it feels important to say regardless.

Jen half-sobs, sniffles, and Judy pulls her even closer on auto-pilot, chuckles a little when Jen just murmurs the angriest, soft, “Fucking shit,” into the space between her neck and shoulder.

“Shhhhh,” Judy says, rubbing Jen’s back in what she hopes is a soothing manner. Judging by the way Jen slumps into her, almost pressing Judy into the mattress, she’s succeeding.

“What would I do without you,” Jen says, and Judy tries not to go stiff with guilt. Instead slings both arms a little tighter around her friend.

“You’d probably still be haunting the halls for a random hunk,” she whispers, and Jen laughs quietly.

“Probably,” she admits, then leans on her elbows, her face is hovering only a short distance over Judy’s. Her eyes are searching for something in her face. Judy doesn’t know what she sees, for a second hopes it’s not too much, one way or the other.

Everything kind of stops when Jen leans further down, her forehead touching Judy’s, and Judy goes still under her.

“What are you doing?” she asks. She feels like she’s about to vibrate out of her skin, and the feeling of Jen’s breath caressing her cheeks doesn’t make it better.

“I…fuck, I don’t know,” Jen murmurs, coming another inch closer. “Is this okay?”

Yes, Judy thinks. We shouldn’t, she thinks, even though she is not yet completely certain of what’s about to happen either; still she nods. You don’t even really know me, she thinks when Jen leans down the last bit, seals their lips together for a careful, chaste kiss, not at all what Judy would have expected from her friend that sometimes reminds her of a pissed-off hurricane.

  
Then she doesn’t think at all anymore when Jen immediately after moves on to her neck, gently tugs on her hair to get her to move her head, and drinks the sigh right out of Judy’s mouth.

“Is this okay?” she later asks again from between Judy’s thighs, her hands so warm and soft on Judy’s hips, and Judy can only nod emphatically, her hands gripping the sheets tight, needing the anchor as Jen’s wicked mouth just keeps wandering, first along her inner thighs, and then finally where she wants it the most. It’s so unusual, to feel shoulders under her thighs that are not much stronger or wider than her own, and for a moment Judy is worried about squeezing Jen too hard, about being too demanding, but Jen puts an end to the notion pretty quickly with her hands, her mouth, her teeth where she digs them gently into the soft meat off Judy’s thighs.

After that, thinking is out of the question altogether. When Jen kisses her after, guiding Judy’s hands to between her thighs, Judy can taste herself in Jen’s mouth, and soon they are both moaning again.

Later, when Jen’s asleep next to her, half the satisfaction and half all the alcohol she consumed over the course of the day, Judy looks at her. Really looks. Watches the shadows move over her face as she thinks about a car in a storage facility, about Steve, about a hospital gown stained with blood. About Jen’s anger and her laughter and her unending love for her children and her telling Judy that she is perfect the way she is.

She thinks about all these things, and she holds Jen’s hand through the night, and only cries a little before morning comes around.

**Author's Note:**

> I just started the show yesterday and immediately fell in love. I had to stop in the middle of the episode to write this real quick, so that's why it's only canon-compliant for like the first 10 minutes of the episode. This was the first time writing femslash for me, so please go easy on me.  
> Thank you all for reading, and I would love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
